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Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Cards, Giants start top tier stretch

The San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals are right next to each other on top of the First Division standings, separated by 10 percentage points through Tuesday's games. They will meet five more times in little more than the next week, and the championship is likely to ride on those games.

The First Division race will go into hyper-drive in the next 10 days, which feature the only seven games this season between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, the two front-running teams in the top tier.

If the first two of these meetings are any indication, this stretch of the race will be memorable.

The Cardinals won the opener in St. Louis Monday night, 2-1, on a solo homer for Yadier Molina and an eighth-inning scratch run that scored on an infield out by Mark Reynolds. The Giants prevailed, 2-0, in the second game, thanking an RBI double by Brandon Crawford, a hit batsman with the bases loaded, six shutout innings for Madison Bumgarner and a stiff bullpen.

The Giants improved to 21-10 (.677) in the First Division, while the Cardinals fell to 10-5 (.667). It is winning percentage that will decide this, so, even if the Giants have a three-game lead, that matters little.

After Tuesday's games, the Giants have 11 games left in the First Division, the first of which is the finale to this series with the Cardinals Wednesday in St. Louis. The Giants will end up with 43 games in the First Division. The Cardinals have 10 games left, bringing their total in the tier to 25. So, each individual game weighs more heavily on the Cardinals, for well or ill.

The Giants and Cardinals, we all know, have rather parallel fortunes in recent postseasons. The Giants win it every time they are in it, which is only half the time. The Cardinals are always in it, but they only win it when the Giants aren't in it, which is half of the time.

In the First Division, their histories are rather like that.

The Cardinals are the only team that has been in the First Division every year since these standings were first kept in 2010. But the Cardinals never even came close to winning it until last year, when they fell short at the end.

The Giants weren't even in the First Division in 2010. But their 2010 postseason pushed them to the Second Division championship and promotion to the First Division for 2011, when they lost the top tier title to the Tampa Bay Rays by a mere eight percentage points. Then the Giants lost the 2012 First Division title to the New York Yankees by only 13 percentage points.

In 2013, the Giants and Yankees both plummeted so far that they both were relegated to the Second Division in 2014. The Giants flourished and easily won the Second Division in 2014, winning promotion to the First Division for this season with a great chance to win it.

So, it's wildly fluctuating ups and downs for the Giants, while the Cardinals have been steady and consistently excellent, without the peaks and pits that are well known to the Giants.

The Giants went a long way towards whittling down the First Division race last week, winning four straight from the Washington Nationals right after the Nationals lost two of three to the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. With that tailspin, the Natties fell from contention and now are 17-18 in the top division.

The only other club in the mix for the First Division fight is the Tampa Bay Rays (17-10, .630), who are two games down the the Giants in the games column. But the Rays have only six games left in the First Division, all against the Toronto Blue Jays during the final week of the season.

Remaining First Division games

ANGELS (six games): August 21-23, three at home against Toronto; September 7-9, three at home against DODGERS.

DODGERS (10 games): August 31-September 2, three at home against San Francisco; September 7-9, three at ANGELS; September 28-October 1, four at San Francisco.

Atlanta (13 games): September 3-6, four at Washington; September 15-17, three at home against Toronto; September 29-October 1, three at home against Washington; October 2-4, three at home against St. Louis.

San Francisco (11 games): August 19, one at St. Louis; August 28-30, three at home against St. Louis; August 31-September 2, three at DODGERS; September 28-October 1, four at home against DODGERS.

St. Louis (10 games): August 19, one at home against San Francisco; August 28-30, three at San Francisco; August 31-September 2, three at home against Washington; October 2-4, three at Atlanta.

Tampa Bay (six games): September 25-27, three at Toronto; October 2-4, three at home against Toronto.

Toronto (12 games): August 21-23, three at ANGELS; September 15-17, three at Atlanta; September 25-27, three at home against Tampa Bay; October 2-4, three at Tampa Bay.

Washington (10 games): August 31-September 2, three at St. Louis; September 3-6, four at home against Atlanta; September 29-October 1, three at Atlanta.

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About LA Big Leagues

Bill Peterson is an award winning journalist who has covered sports around the country for more than 30 years, including Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and major collegiate sports for daily newspapers and major wire services. His longest stint was with The Cincinnati Post from 1986-1998. He also has worked at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Miami Herald. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Sporting News and Baseball America, among other publications. He later produced successful public interest newspapers and websites in the Austin/San Antonio area. Peterson is a lifetime member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, formerly with a vote for the Hall of Fame. He can be contacted by email at bill@labigleagues.com.